Europa Report

I had high hopes for this film and it’s fledgling director Sebastián Cordero. I had hoped that I was going to receive a pleasant surprise … the same kind that Duncan Jones gave me with his superb debut, Moon. Nope. For all its visual wizardry and clever editing, Europa Report just didn’t cut the mustard. It offered nothing particularly new or unique, which to be fair is not necessarily a bad thing, but unfortunately Europa Report rocketed headfirst into the trap of methodically employing clichéd scifi tropes. You can pretty much take the first half of Alien, gloss it up a bit, wash, rinse, and repeat, which goes to show that Nostomo’s landing in Scott’s 1979 Alien is still a timeless and unparalleled piece of film making. That said, it has its moments, and Shalto Copley’s scene (at the very end of the trailer below) is quite intense, but ultimately Europa Report didn’t grab me and I didn’t care much for its characters.